And visited the gravesite of Marshal South to tie in with our next outing near the remote and waterless Ghost Mountain where poet, author and artist, Marshal and his family lived for 17 years in the Anza-Borrego Desert.

They pursued a primitive life and natural lifestyle as recorded in his over 102 articles for Desert Magazine, 1939 to 1948, which are contained in the book, "Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles – An Experiment in Primitive Living": http://www.desertusa.com/web_cart/db/pages/3010.html

This L.L. Bean Emergency Weather Radio, made by Eton, was instrumental in telling us of a NOAA Weather High Wind Advisory, which helped us to choose the safest route home. This portable FR-300 radio has a hand-crank generator that charges an internal NiMH battery. It can also run on three AA batteries.

Our factory-installed 2-panel solar charging system continues to serve us well here in Southern California. The sun is now travels on a more southerly arc and it took longer to clear the nearby trees in the morning. But still our batteries were restored to 100% by late morning on most days on this non-hook-up outing. And even on a cloudy day, we generated enough amps to restore our batteries to 95% by 12:34 p.m.

See Rich Luhr’s log of daily temperatures, sun conditions, and power use/gain when camping at non-hook-up sites starting with September 27, 2007 (at Yellowstone) on his Tour of America blog, along with a discussion of how cold weather and use of furnace affects the solar budget. He discusses the importance of conservation efforts, such as lowering the thermostat, and looking at better power management systems at:http://tour.airstreamlife.com/wordpress/index.php?paged=2

This website is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Airstream, Inc. or any of its affiliates. Airstream is a registered trademark of Airstream Inc. All rights reserved. Airstream trademark used under license to Social Knowledge LLC.